Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but the characterization of how the appointment occurs is that the Prime Minister of the day provides advice to the Queen, and the Queen formally makes the appointment.

Veterans Affairs committee  The first point to make is that when the government of the day set up the ombudsman back in 1977, the approach was that since Australia was a relatively small country, with a population today of 20 million—as against your 32 million—for economy of scale and efficiency reasons, they created a whole-of-government ombudsman to deal with the totality of the federal government.

Veterans Affairs committee  As I said earlier, I'm not representing the Australian ombudsman; I'm dealing with public information. As I understand it, a lot of the agencies the ombudsman deals with need information specialists, practitioners, to deal with them. So the easiest way to do that is to create those units within the ombudsman's office.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an opening statement. Lieutenant Colonel Anderson doesn't propose to speak, so I'll use the time I have I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present to you today, and hopefully I can assist your deliberations in terms of establishing a veterans ombudsman for Canadian veterans.